Over 20 years ago, Stuart Hall posed the question, 'Whose heritage?' (Hall, 1999). Hall's call for the critical transformation and reimagining of heritage and nation, for 'un-settling "The Heritage" and re-imagining the post-nation', remains as urgent as ever. In the context of the ongoing disparate impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global re-ignition of the Black Lives Matter movement, 'a national collection' cannot be imagined without addressing the structural inequalities in the arts, debates around 'contested heritage', and the difficult and contentious histories imbued in objects. Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage aims to build on decolonial feminist approaches and creative machine learning (ML) development: to enable digital cross-search of collections, to surface patterns of bias, to uncover hidden and unexpected connections, and to thus open up new interpretative frames and potential narratives of art, nation and heritage. Transforming Collections seeks to address the following questions: - How can we counter structural biases and decentre white Western narratives in our cultural collections? (Wekker, 2016; Olusoga, 2016) - How can we surface suppressed histories, amplify marginalized voices, and reevaluate artists and artworks ignored or sidelined by dominant narratives? - How can we transform the architectures and 'algorithms of oppression' (Noble, 2018) that underpin collections and reproduce inequalities and erasures? - How can we imagine a distributed yet connected 'national collection' that builds on and enriches existing knowledge, with multiple and multivocal new narratives? - How can we reimagine art, nation and heritage through collections as part of the wider 'digital cultural record' (Risam, 2019)? Transforming Collections is an interdisciplinary collaborative project led by University of the Arts London (UAL) with Tate, home to the national collection of British art from the 16th century and an international modern and contemporary art collection. The project will be led by a core team from UAL's Decolonising Arts Institute and Creative Computing Institute, working closely with Tate as an Independent Research Organisation (IRO). In addition to Tate, Transforming Collections has nine project partners and four collaborating organisations across the UK, representing significant public collections as well as major arts charities and key archives of different scales. These are: Arts Council Collection, British Council Collection, Birmingham Museums Trust, Glasgow Museums, Liverpool Museums Trust, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Wellcome Collection, Art Fund, Contemporary Art Society, Art UK, the JISC Archives Hub and Iniva (Institute of International Visual Art). We also have an international project partner in the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, who will host a major project conference in year one. The project adopts a braided approach enfolding 1) Critical art historical and museological research with 2) Creative machine learning development and participatory design and 3) Artists digital commissions as interventions into collections. Building on the insights and emerging findings of the Tate-led TANC Foundation project, Provisional Semantics (2020-22), and the UAL-led projects, AHRC Black Artists and Modernism (2015-18) and UKRI MIMIC project (Musically Intelligent Machines Interacting Creatively, 2018-21), Transforming Collections approaches the challenge of 'dissolving barriers' as a problem of knowledge and power - not only a question of what becomes visible, legible, accessible, but also how, and for whom. As such, Transforming Collections aims to model and test new and sustainable ways of searching across collections; to expose in-built inequities in collections data; to reconnect, recontextualise and reinterpret the work of 'artists of colour'; and empower diverse stakeholders in discovering the sometimes uncomfortable stories that collections.

Over the last decade, the creative industries have been revolutionised by the Internet and the digital economy. The UK, already punching above its weight in the global cultural market, stands at a pivotal moment where it is well placed to build a cultural, business and regulatory infrastructure in which first movers as significant as Google, Facebook, Amazon or iTunes may emerge and flourish, driving new jobs and industry. However, for some creators and rightsholders the transition from analogue to digital has been as problematic as it has been promising. Cultural heritage institutions are also struggling to capitalise upon new revenue streams that digitisation appears to offer, while maintaining their traditional roles. Policymakers are hampered by a lack of consensus across stakeholders and confused by partisan evidence lacking robust foundations. Research in conjunction with industry is needed to address these problems and provide support for legislators. CREATe will tackle this regulatory and business crisis, helping the UK creative industry and arts sectors survive, grow and become global innovation pioneers, with an ambitious programme of research delivered by an interdisciplinary team (law, business, economics, technology, psychology and cultural analysis) across 7 universities. CREATe aims to act as an honest broker, using open and transparent methods throughout to provide robust evidence for policymakers and legislators which can benefit all stakeholders. CREATe will do this by: - focussing on studying and collaborating with SMEs and individual creators as the incubators of innovation; - identifying "good, bad and emergent business models": which business models can survive the transition to the digital?, which cannot?, and which new models can succeed and scale to drive growth and jobs in the creative economy, as well as supporting the public sector in times of recession?; - examining empirically how far copyright in its current form really does incentivise or reward creative work, especially at the SME/micro level, as well as how far innovation may come from "open" business models and the "informal economy"; - monitoring copyright reform initiatives in Europe, at WIPO and other international fora to assess how they impact on the UK and on our work; - using technology as a solution not a problem: by creating pioneering platforms and tools to aid creators and users, using open standards and released under open licences; - examining how to increase and derive revenues from the user contribution to the creative economy in an era of social media, mash-up, data mining and "prosumers"; - assessing the role of online intermediaries such as ISPs, social networks and mobile operators to see if they encourage or discourage the production and distribution of cultural goods, and what role they should play in enforcing copyright. Given the important governing role of these bodies should they be subject to regulation like public bodies, and if so, how?; - consider throughout this work how the public interest and human rights, such as freedom of expression, privacy, and access to knowledge for the socially or physically excluded, may be affected either positively or negatively by new business models and new ways to enforce copyright. To investigate these issues our work will be arranged into seven themes: SMEs and good, bad and emergent business models; Open business models; Regulation and enforcement; Creators and creative practice; Online intermediaries and physical and virtual platforms; User creation, behaviour and norms; and, Human rights and the public interest. Our deliverables across these themes will be drawn together to inform a Research Blueprint for the UK Creative Economy to be launched in October 2016.